


Got You

by FictionPenned



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, Pranks and Practical Jokes, inspired by the hotel room prank from the office
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:15:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27447721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionPenned/pseuds/FictionPenned
Summary: “What’s going on?” Eve asks as she braces her shoulders against the onslaught of the wind and restarts her walk back to their temporary home.Her ear fills with garbled, messy crackling.“Hang on a second, you sound like you’re in a blender.”Eve pulls the phone away from her ear and frowns. The fissures across the glass are so thickly spiderwebbed that she can’t make out anything on the top half of the screen. She should have convinced Villanelle to opt for more indestructible burner phones, but Villanelle has a habit of insisting upon glamorous things rather than practical ones.As expected, when she brings the phone back to her ear, the general sound quality has not changed.Written for Fic In A Box 2020
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30
Collections: Fic In A Box





	Got You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roguelightning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roguelightning/gifts).



Wind whips down the skyrise-lined street, toying with Eve’s hair and tugging it loose from beneath her knitted cap. The bitter chill of winter bites at her fingers and the tip of her nose, and in response, Eve pulls her jacket a bit tighter around her body and buries her chin deep beneath the folds of her scarf. When Villanelle first proposed that they run away to America together, Eve had envisioned sandy beaches and sprawling farms, and she was not entirely prepared for the grey, cold, foul-smelling winters of Manhattan. Despite all of the songs and the movies that weave narratives about finding love and happiness in this city, Eve fails to see the appeal. Currently, her only solace is found in the idea that they likely won’t linger here for too long. Successfully hiding from The Twelve and their operatives requires constant movement.

Next time, Eve is going to lobby for a stay in Palm Beach. A life in hiding is bound to be a bit more pleasant on the West Coast.

Somewhere deep within a pocket, her phone vibrates. She stops in the middle of the sidewalk, frantically pawing at the outside of her jacket with frozen, fumbling fingers as she tries to locate it. A woman with a double-wide stroller barrels into her without regard for either Eve or the children in the stroller, and Eve spits a quick, bitter “Fuck you,” at the rude stranger's retreating back.

Once Eve finally manages to free the phone, she drops it, shattering the screen. If she didn’t hate New York already, this would be the last straw. Eve stares down at the mangled, still-ringing phone for a couple of heartbeats before she finally gathers up the nerve required to scoop it up and hit the ‘accept call’ button.

“What’s going on?” Eve asks as she braces her shoulders against the onslaught of the wind and restarts her walk back to their temporary home.

Her ear fills with garbled, messy crackling.

“Hang on a second, you sound like you’re in a blender.”

Eve pulls the phone away from her ear and frowns. The fissures across the glass are so thickly spiderwebbed that she can’t make out anything on the top half of the screen. She should have convinced Villanelle to opt for more indestructible burner phones, but Villanelle has a habit of insisting upon glamorous things rather than practical ones.

As expected, when she brings the phone back to her ear, the general sound quality has not changed.

“Can you hear me?” Eve asks both slowly and loudly.

Indiscernible noise is the only reply, rendering the question entirely useless. Eve probably should have seen that coming, but the cold and the chaos and the shattered phone screen have gone to her head, apparently.

“I’ll be home in five!” she yells into the phone. She hopes the caller is Villanelle. It’s probably Villanelle. She doesn’t see who else would be calling her from a private number at this time of day. Scammers calling about the extended warranty on her car normally strike closer to lunch. “I dropped my phone. Don’t ask how. It’s not a good story, but it’s barely working now. I’ll pick up another one tomorrow.”

Whoever is on the other end of the call hangs up, and the line goes dead.

With a huff of frustration, Eve shoves the phone into one of her pockets. She’ll probably have to dig tiny little shards of glass out of her jacket later, but that’s a problem for Drunk Wednesday Night Eve to solve, not Sober Tuesday Night Eve. Who knows? Maybe she’ll even feel a bit warmer by then.

It is three blocks before she reaches their building. The doorman nods at her, and Eve bristles involuntarily. She doesn’t trust people who keep an eye on other people anymore.

If she’s quite honest, she doesn’t trust _anyone_ anymore.

There’s something about watching your former boss shoot a man in the head that breeds paranoia and suspicion.

She doesn’t even trust Villanelle sometimes, and they share a living situation.

Eve furls her hands into tight fists as she crosses the gilded lobby and steps into the elevator, trying to keep her head down and look as natural as possible. There are cameras in the more public areas of the building, and though she knows that it is unlikely that anyone will think to pull the footage and look for them here, she tries to stay out of the line of fire as much as possible. Villanelle, however, has no such reservations. Eve once saw Villanelle saunter across the floor in a dress so blindingly orange that it could probably be seen from space, and she constantly feels like she has to overcompensate for her partner’s many indiscretions by being even more fastidious.

The ride up the elevator seems to take forever. Penthouses may be desirable property, but Eve could do without the constant worrying that she might be stuck on a lift with a stranger for more than 60 stories. When the floor has finally stopped moving beneath her feet and the door opens with a bright, decisive _ding_ , Eve’s eyes alight upon the door to the apartment that she shares with Villanelle.

The door is ajar.

Immediately, her heart sinks.

Given their history, the unheard call, and the bad luck that has already plagued her walk home, Eve’s mind automatically jumps to assuming the worst-case scenario. Someone has broken in. Villanelle is dead or injured or gone. There is no doubt in Eve’s mind that she would have suffered the same fate if she had been home.

She breaks into a panicked run as she casts off her brief moment of shocked paralysis. She intensely fears what unknown horrors might await her on the other side of the open door, but her fear has always taken a backseat to her impulses. Eve is incredibly smart, but she also has the bad habit of springing into action first and thinking a situation through later. Indeed, it is the very habit that drew her into a romantic and sexual entanglement with a notorious serial killer in the first place.

Her steps slow as her feet move onto the plush carpet that dominates the parlor as she suddenly realizes that whatever intruder entered their home might still be here. Every corner seems sinister, every piece of furniture is a potential hiding place, every linen closet a temporary shelter.

It would be wise to call for back-up, to turn around and summon the elevator back to the building and tell the doorman that there’s been a burglary, but Eve doesn’t want detectives and officials prying into their private business, either. That’s a good way to get interrogated about her relationship with Villanelle and find her sorry ass shipped back to Britain, which is the last thing she wants right now.

Nico is there, Carolyn is there, and at the moment, Eve would very much like to continue to keep either a continent or an ocean firmly situated between herself and the two of them.

Not to mention that, logistically speaking, she _did_ help murder a different Russian assassin.

No one else knows, but she does, and that sense of _knowing_ makes her fearful.

Better to be in a place that doesn’t remind her of her worst self.

Better to be in a position where the only people she’s interacting with have definitely murdered more people than she has.

Better to move on.

As she inches further and further into the apartment, it occurs to her that she should be carrying a weapon, just in case. If she’s quite honest, she should have probably been carrying a weapon during her day-to-day life, even if that weapon is just a set of iron knuckles disguised like a cat keychain. As it is, however, she has a broken phone, a set of stubby keys, and half of a cream cheese bagel wrapped in a paper bag.

Careful to maintain a low profile and keep the bulk of the apartment's square footage firmly in view, Eve moves towards the kitchen, slides open a drawer, and arms herself with a paring knife. It’s not much, but she could probably take someone’s eye out in a pinch.

Slowly, she begins to move towards the hallway that leads toward the bedrooms and bathrooms. There are drops of blood on the carpet — bright red and sticky. She doesn’t kneel down and check to make sure that it’s blood, she just assumes that it’s the only thing it can be.

Though her palm is slick with anxious sweat, Eve tightens her grip on the handle of the knife, suddenly aware of how useless it could be in the face of an armed assailant.

If someone could get the upper hand on Villanelle, they could definitely take out a former MI-5 agent armed with a paring knife.

Still, she steels herself and moves deeper into the apartment.

The trail of blood leads towards the closed door of the bedroom that she and Villanelle share. She places her free hand on the knob, and — after taking a deep, shaking breath — she throws in open.

The bedroom is a mess.

Bloodstained clothes litter a tangled mess of sheets on the bed. Eve’s head and vision swim, and for a moment, she thinks that she might faint. She was right. The worst has happened.

On the opposite side of the room, a breeze rustles the sheer white curtains that line an open window. It looks like a scene from a prison break movie. Carefully tied fabric and towels form a knotted rope that leads out the window, no doubt bridging the gap between the penthouse and the fire escape below. Eve doesn’t even know where bulk the materials for the rope came from. A secret stash of extra bedsheets, maybe. Some towels stowed beneath the sink. A few carefully selected items from either her own closet or Villanelle’s.

The television in the corner fills the room with a steady stream of broken static, a noise that only seems to heighten the sense of unease that permeates the apartment.

Behind her, the door to the bedroom closes, and Eve almost jumps out of her skin, whirling around and bearing the knife with no small amount of wanton abandon, ready to face down any would-be intruders. Instead, she is met with a message scrawled in lipstick on the back of the door.

_It was Eve_.

The final letter descends into a downward scrawl, trailing down towards a pool of blood on the floor.

Despite her previous caution. Eve shrieks.

Almost immediately, she claps her free hand over her mouth to soften the sound, but it’s too late. It rings through the penthouse like a death knell, announcing her presence.

Behind her, there is a shuffling noise.

She whirls around, looking for a threat or an intruder or worse.

The closet door opens, and Villanelle’s limp body falls out of the doors.

Again, Eve screams.

And Villanelle suddenly springs to life, curling in upon herself on the floor in an uncontrollable fit of uproarious laughter.

“Your face!” she cackles, squinting up at Eve as a single finger pins her with a decisive point. “You should have seen it. You thought I was dead!” More words follow the declaration, but they’re drowned out by another wave of ecstatic laughter.

Eve hurls her paring knife towards the bloodstained clothes on the bed. Relief and rage and irritation rise in her chest, battling for real estate. “It’s not funny!” she manages to say eventually, curling her hands into tight fists as she stalks across the floor to stand over Villanelle.

Villanelle continues to laugh, and Eve nudges her in the rib cage with the toe of her boot.

“I hate you.”

“Oh, come _on_ ,” Villanelle protests, dropping from her natural Russian accent and into an assumed New York drawl. “You know you don’t. I’m funny. Everybody loves me.” Her uncontrollable giggles momentarily pause as the assassin-turned-prankster rolls her lower lip into an exaggerated pout.

She’s right, and Eve _hates_ that she’s right.

Eve shoves her hands into the pockets of her jacket, fingers butting up against the shattered glass of her phone, as she takes a step away from Villanelle.

“What’s the blood on the floor then?”

Villanelle is practically beaming as she rolls back onto her feet. “Strawberry syrup. Brilliant, isn’t it? Stole it from the kitchen. Nobody even noticed.”

Eve turns towards Villanelle, raising an eyebrow. “Does it stain?”

Villanelle’s gaze rolls upward as she contemplates the question for a mere flash of a moment. “Don’t know,” she shrugs. “I suppose we’re about to find out, aren’t we.”

“Oh no, you’re not going to put this on me.” Eve pulls her phone out of her pocket, brandishing it as a pointer as she sweeps her arms wide and indicates the broad extent of the prank’s mess. “Your mess, you clean it. Besides, I’ve got to get a new phone, don’t I?”

Villanelle takes a step forward, soft hands wrapping around Eve’s waist as she draws her closer. The curves of their bodies press together with every panting breath that Eve takes and every aftershock of Villanelle’s earth-shaking laughter.

“I can get you a phone,” Villanelle purrs. “And hire a cleaner.”

“No!” The protestation is slightly less passionate than it might have been if Eve wasn’t distracted and flustered from the close contact, but nonetheless, it is effective.

“Why not?”

“I am not explaining _this_ to a cleaner.”

Villanelle scoffs and scuffs the sole of her shoe against the floor almost childishly. “Don't be ridiculous, Eve. Good cleaners never ask questions.”

“Oh, so you’re going to thoroughly vet whoever you call?”

Eve expects a reconsideration of the idea, a surrender, a quiet, unassuming ‘no,’ but instead, Villanelle draws even closer. Lips find lips and breath finds breath as she whispers a gentle “Yes,” into Eve’s lungs.

Despite herself, Eve’s knees quake, her balance wavers, and she threatens to melt beneath the kiss.

It’s embarrassing, really. She’s a grown woman, yet here she is acting like a smitten teenager with her first crush.

She takes a step backward, pulling their faces apart, but Villanelle’s hands continue to linger at her waist.

“I want this gone by the time I come back.”

The command verges upon a threat, but rather than cower, Villanelle smiles. “Done.”

Eve takes a step towards the lipstick smeared floor, but a thought strikes her down, and she turns around to once again face the assassin and delver one last demand. “And I want to move somewhere warmer.”

This, apparently, is a much more difficult request.

Villanelle toys with the idea, scrunching her forehead and turning her eyes towards the ceiling. Every second of pause eggs on Eve’s irritation, and she is about to voice another challenge when Villanelle finally answers.

“We’ll talk about it later. Once you’ve gotten over this a bit.”

A resigned sigh tumbles from Eve’s lips. “Fine. But if I come back to another prank, I swear on my life, I will kill you.”

A knowing smirk tugs at the corners of Villanelle’s mouth. “You would never.”

Unfortunately, she’s right, and Eve storms out the door, slamming it behind her with a loud bang that reverberates through the mangled and red-stained rooms.


End file.
